Michel Petrucciani Trio – One Night in Karlsruhe (CD, Jazzhaus)

Sensational: Michel Petrucciani’s SWR archival rarities in first publication! With his predilection for the trio as a central form of expression, Petrucciani was out of date in the mid-1980s. Keith Jarrett had also chosen this option with some success at the time. By and large, however, the trio has been considered exhausted since the death of Bill Evans. Petrucciani was not impressed by this and always signed new partners to his side. For example, in December 1987 he went into the studio with Eddie Gomez and Al Foster to record some of his own compositions. A few months earlier he had realized the same plan with Gary Peacock and Roy Haynes. The following year the recordings appeared collectively under the title Michel Plays Petrucciani, and the pianist also took some of them with him on tour. When he stopped in Karlsruhe on July 7, 1988, he had 13th, Mr. K.J. , La Champagne, One Of Us and She Did It Again from my own pen in the musical baggage. The rest of the program consisted of evergreens from the Great American Songbook and freestyle pieces from modern jazz such as John Coltrane’s Giant Steps. Michel Petrucciani was a driven man who, in his most active years, played more than 100 concerts a year, with the feeling on his neck that he had less time available than other people in view of his illness, which he repeatedly mentioned in conversations with friends and journalists. He wanted to condense his music, to release energies under tension that awaited discharge. Bass player Gary Peacock and drummer Roy Haynes were the right partners for this. One had been socialized in Modern Bop, had let off steam in the free time and later perfected his trio game as a partner of Bill Evans, Paul Bley and Keith Jarrett, among others. The other had personally seen the birth of bebop and since then has been one of the busiest drummers in jazz and one of the luminaries in his field.